AI Markets: Anthropic at $65 billion, Nvidia closes the Ohio deal, SpaceX rebounds

Anthropic reports an annualized revenue run rate of $65 billion, up from just $47 billion in May, a few weeks ahead of an IPO that could target a valuation of up to $2 trillion. While Nvidia finalizes its financial backing for OpenAI’s mega data center in Ohio, SpaceX stock rebounds 40% in five sessions and a star AI hedge fund implodes under its own leverage.

Anthropic: revenue jumps to $65 billion, with a $2 trillion IPO in sight

Anthropic told its investors that its annualized revenue reached $65 billion at the end of July, up from $47 billion in May and barely $9 billion at the end of 2025. The startup behind Claude is preparing its stock market debut on that basis.

The key points:

  • Annualized revenue: $65 billion at the end of July (vs. $47 billion in May, ~$9 billion at the end of 2025), a more than sevenfold increase in eight months.
  • Anthropic is presenting banks with a revenue projection of $190 billion to $200 billion for 2028, which underpins the valuation targeted for the IPO.
  • Several investors now float an IPO valuation that could reach $2 trillion, compared with $965 billion in the last private round in June.
  • Listing planned on the Nasdaq (no PEA): exposure possible through a standard securities account or a UCITS-format US tech stock ETF once the stock is listed.

Growth that upends the industry’s benchmarks

The $65 billion figure is not an audited result but an indication shared internally with investors, according to Reuters and CNBC. It would put Anthropic ahead of OpenAI’s annual revenue pace, estimated at around $40 billion by Bloomberg in mid-August. For the second quarter of 2026, Anthropic reportedly expects at least $10.9 billion in revenue, more than double the previous quarter, and a first quarterly operating profit of around $559 million.

The acceleration comes as the IPO timeline tightens: several outlets now point to September or October 2026, raising the possibility that Anthropic goes public before OpenAI, whose listing could slip to 2027.

A bet on 2028, not on today

What strikes analysts is the valuation method. The banks running the IPO are applying revenue multiples to the 2028 projection of $190-200 billion rather than to current revenue, an unusual practice that “skips” three years of actual results. They are leaning on comparables such as Palantir (53 times expected 2026 revenue) and Cloudflare (41.6 times), according to LSEG data cited by Reuters.

The bet assumes triple-digit growth holds up while spending on compute, model training and hiring keeps weighing on margins. In early August, one market strategist called the multiple being considered for the IPO (40 to 50 times revenue) potentially “dangerous.” For a European investor, the episode highlights a trait shared by the upcoming listings of AI labs: valuations are built on growth promises three or four years out, a horizon that mechanically amplifies the risk if results disappoint.

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Nvidia finalizes $105 billion backing for OpenAI’s mega data center in Ohio

After several weeks of negotiations and an amount cut twice along the way, Nvidia made it official on August 17: it is backing the financing of the data center campus SB Energy is building for OpenAI in Ohio.

The key points:

  • Nvidia is guaranteeing up to $105 billion of the campus’s lease obligations, and is also investing $1.5 billion in equity directly in SB Energy (SoftBank’s energy subsidiary).
  • The campus, named PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, is set to reach 8 GW of capacity on the former uranium enrichment site in Piketon (Ohio), under a 20-year lease with OpenAI.
  • Phased ramp-up: about 0.8 GW starting in 2028, a firm guarantee on 4.25 GW, and an option on an additional 3.75 GW.
  • SB Energy and SoftBank are committing to build more than 10 GW of power generation and to invest $4.2 billion in the regional power grid.

An amount revised three times in three weeks

The figure has swung widely since the first reports in late July, which mentioned a $250 billion guarantee. Under pressure from investors worried about the risk Nvidia was taking on, the package had already dropped below $120 billion by mid-August. The final figure, $105 billion, released in an official Nvidia press release and a regulatory filing on August 17, covers only the lease guarantee for the first phase of the project. A separate package to finance OpenAI’s chip purchases (up to $350 billion was floated in late July) is reportedly still being discussed on its own track.

Nvidia stock took the news fairly calmly: it closed nearly flat (-0.1%) on the day of the announcement, a sign the market sees the final commitment, equivalent to roughly two quarters of Nvidia’s free cash flow according to several analysts, as easier to digest than the initial $250 billion version.

The “circular financing” debate rolls on

This setup, in which the chip supplier indirectly guarantees its customer’s purchase of its own processors, has fueled investor criticism since late July over a risk of “circular financing.” Jensen Huang again rejected the term on August 17, arguing that the site could generate up to $600 billion in Nvidia compute revenue by 2030 once the full 8 GW is deployed. The deal shows the sheer scale of the “largest data center ever built”: Piketon is set to house Nvidia chips exclusively, on a Cold War industrial site repurposed for AI. For a European investor, exposure to this kind of bet remains indirect, through Nvidia itself (securities account, not PEA-eligible) or global semiconductor ETFs, and depends heavily on whether OpenAI, still private, can honor a 20-year lease.

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SpaceX: stock rebounds 40% in five sessions as Nvidia and Alphabet reveal their stakes

After a summer of steady decline since its June peak, SpaceX stock (SPCX) is getting its color back. It jumped about 40% between its August 3 low and August 13, driven by a wave of regulatory filings revealing who is betting on Elon Musk’s company.

The key points:

  • The stock climbed from a low of $104.83 on August 3 to about $146 on August 13 (+40% in five sessions), adding nearly $530 billion in market cap, before easing slightly to around $140 on August 17.
  • The unlock of 911 million insider shares on August 6 did not trigger the feared selloff; short interest fell from about 34% to 11% of the float.
  • New 13F filings reveal that Nvidia holds $21 billion in SpaceX shares (stemming from a $2 billion investment in xAI, which SpaceX absorbed), bringing the combined known stakes of Nvidia, Alphabet ($94 billion) and AMD ($565 million) to about $115.5 billion.
  • Twelve family offices, including those of the Pritzker ($1.8 billion) and Rinehart ($1.4 billion) families, together hold about $3.8 billion in SpaceX shares, according to Bloomberg.

The market absorbs the shock of share unlocks

SpaceX stock had lost up to half its value between its June peak ($225.64) and its early August low, amid fears tied to successive waves of share unlocks and still-heavy losses at xAI. The fact that the market absorbed the August 6 unlock, the largest to date, without any damage reassured investors, as did the collapse in short interest. Morgan Stanley maintains a base-case price target of $300 (bull case at $600), and Goldman Sachs has floated a global space market that could reach $1.8 trillion by 2035.

Nvidia and Alphabet, rocket shareholders almost by accident

The week’s real news lies mostly in the 13F filings, which require institutional investors to disclose their positions as of June 30. They reveal that Nvidia became a SpaceX shareholder almost by ricochet: its $21 billion stake comes from a $2 billion investment made in xAI in 2025, before Elon Musk’s startup was absorbed by SpaceX in early 2026. Alphabet, for its part, is cashing in on a much older bet ($900 million invested more than ten years ago) that has become one of the best deals in the history of tech venture capital. This web of cross-holdings, with a chip supplier becoming a shareholder in its customer, itself a shareholder in another AI lab, illustrates the growing concentration of the big names in US tech around a single ecosystem. For a European investor, SpaceX (Nasdaq) remains outside the PEA; indirect exposure comes through Nvidia and Alphabet themselves, which are eligible in UCITS format.

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A former OpenAI researcher’s star fund blows up midflight: the lesson of leverage in AI

The name of Leopold Aschenbrenner, 24, a former OpenAI researcher turned star hedge fund manager, resurfaced this week in new regulatory documents. They detail how his fund, Situational Awareness, lost nearly two-thirds of its value in a month, forcing an emergency sale to Citadel.

The key points:

  • Situational Awareness LP peaked at about $45 billion in assets in mid-2026 after gaining more than 1,000% since inception, powered by 4x leveraged bets on AI-related stocks.
  • Between June 30 and July 29, the fund lost about 67% of its value: SanDisk -55%, Micron -36%, Bloom Energy -46%, TSMC -21.6%, versus -2.3% for the S&P 500 over the same period.
  • Margin calls from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Bank of America forced the sale of about $16 billion in listed positions to Citadel (Ken Griffin), at a discount of roughly 10%.
  • All the fund, now a private vehicle, has left is a stake in Anthropic estimated at $5 billion, which can’t be sold off in the short term.

A bullish bet wrecked by its own leverage

Aschenbrenner made a name for himself in 2024 with a widely discussed essay, “Situational Awareness,” betting on artificial general intelligence by the end of the decade and on a massive boom in compute infrastructure to get there. His fund turned that conviction into a portfolio heavily concentrated in memory and chip makers (SanDisk, Micron, TSMC) and data center operators (CoreWeave, Nebius), amplified by leverage of about four times capital. As long as those stocks kept rising, leverage multiplied the gains. In late June, a pullback in memory and semiconductor stocks threw the mechanism into reverse: losses were multiplied by four as well, triggering a cascade of margin calls at the fund’s three lending banks.

What this episode says about the hidden risk in the AI trade

The saga didn’t shake the broader market (the S&P 500 lost only 2.3% over the period), but it illustrates a risk specific to the AI theme: extreme concentration in a handful of stocks, combined with leverage, can turn a conviction into a disaster in a matter of weeks, even when the underlying thesis (demand for AI compute) remains intact. For an individual investing in European markets, the episode can’t be directly replicated, since a standard securities account or PEA doesn’t allow this kind of leverage, but it is a reminder of why diversifying through a sector UCITS ETF remains more resilient than a concentrated bet, however convincing the original reasoning.

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Edition prepared by our monitoring agent (data and sources as of Tuesday, August 18, 2026), reviewed in line with our editorial policy. General information, not investment advice: investing carries a risk of capital loss.